Freedom Is…

Sunday, April 25th, 2010

July 4th is coming. And I know I cannot depend on my President, in spite of His astonishing number-of-speeches-per-year statistic, to ever mention the “F” word.

So we should put some real thought into what exactly this word means. Here are my suggestions — freedom is…

1. Relying on your own fortune, skills and good judgment for your survival and station in life, rather than on the decisions of others, no matter how friendly those others may seem to you at the moment.
2. The right to do things that may bring displeasure to others, regardless of how powerful they may be.
3. The absence of nuisance laws that are passed solely for the purpose of bringing your code of morality into line with someone else’s.
4. The ability to choose your charities.
5. Independence in selecting your ethical priorities.
6. Being able to do what you can, right now, without waiting for everyone else to be able to do the same thing.
7. Raising your children as you see fit, into the kind of adults you think the world needs.
8. Using your intellect. The freedom to say, as George Orwell said, that two and two make four.
9. Being entitled to everything that would be available to you — provided you could find it — if you were the only living person in existence.
10. Choosing what nobody else would want to choose, and still being able to choose it.
11. Being the full and uncontested owner of an hour of your own time, before such an event as you sell it to another.
12. Voicing an opinion without being ostracized for it.
13. Engaging in a partnership with a second party, without contending with the hostile judgment of a third.
14. Travel. Here and there you’re stopped from going into places, but nobody stops you from going out.
15. Being the guy in a teenage-slasher movie who dies first. You know, the guy who goes off by himself. Nobody stops him.
16. Your poorest judgment.
17. Your hourly blood, sweat and tears being invested in your system of values, and nobody else’s.
18. Being able to make decisions that lead to things being done, without waiting for a vote.
19. Doing things that don’t cost anybody anything, although they make them very angry…and then doing them again.
20. Explaining to your children that things don’t make any sense, when they don’t. Even though “polite company” must pretend they make more sense than they really do.

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